Salvation
by a mountain of gideon's scones
Summary: "He's the key to your salvation." /RonHermione, after the war.


This idea got into my head and it wouldn't leave, so I had to write it.

2nd person RonHermione.

This is dedicated to **Lucy **(WeasleySeeker) because this is her OTP, and also to **Maddie**, because she ships it, too.

* * *

You're depressed

You suppose that's the right word for it; it's not really a magical illness (even though you're still _people_ and get affected by conditions like these, just as Muggles do) so you're basing your diagnosis on TV shows you watched in the holidays, and words you remember your parents throwing around. So you've come to the conclusion: you're depressed.

You don't know why this is the case—you just helped defeat the darkest wizard the world has ever seen—yet you think this could be the problem. Everyone expects you to be ecstatic, for elation to be the over-arching emotion in everything you do: you can't do that, no matter how hard you try. When everyone is celebrating (even those who lost loved loves, because they know that's what they would have wanted) you find yourself going to the temporary memorial at the site of Voldemort's defeat, the one that's engraved with the names of everyone who died fighting him, no matter when that was. You spend hours tracing each and every name, because it soothes you, gives you a chance to let the tears out and to try and get rid of this _thing_ (sadness) inside of you, but it doesn't work.

One of the hardest names to trace is Fred's—but they're all hard, really, because you can't help but feel that you don't deserve to live, unlike most of these.

You scratch that thought: _all_ of them deserve to live, compared to you.

You spend the evenings sitting out next to the memorial, just thinking about how little you've done and how you deserve none of the praise; you say you're no witch extraordinaire, that everyone is capable of doing what you do, but these thoughts are saved for when you're alone, at the memorial. You don't want to seem weak in public do you? You don't want the public to see that you, one of their saviours, is ripping herself apart, because what would that leave them—the thought that if even _Hermione Granger_ isn't content that Voldemort is gone, what right do they have to be? You need to be strong for them, for those looking up to you, and that hurts—but you do it, because that's your duty.

(You never wanted to be regarded as a heroine, though. You know that.)

The war's ending gets further and further into the past, yet the feelings done fade; in fact, they do the opposite—you feel even more melancholy, if that could be possible. Hogwarts has been restored to its former glory, this being the one thing you shake yourself out of your sadness to wholly appreciate: the place that feels the most like home is back.

You're preparing to return to Hogwarts to study for your NEWTs, since you think that you think you'll need them later in life (or, at least, that's the answer you would normally give, so that's the one that you recite dully) but it still feels like a dream. You wake up screaming most nights, yelling for Ron and Harry to get out of the tent _now_, that there's someone after them—but when you wake up, you're in your bed in your parents' old house: you haven't been to get them from Australia yet.

Ron…you can't tell if he knows there's something wrong with you or not, because most of the time he's joking with you and pressing sweet, tender kisses to your skin, and you manage to force a natural-looking smile onto your face to try and hide your depression. Yet there are times when you catch him looking at you with a sadness in his eyes as though he knows you're hurting and yet he can't do anything about it. And that hurts you even more, because it's bad enough that you're destroying _yourself_; you don't want to destroy the man you love, too.

He doesn't deserve it, you think.

_~x~_

Things seem to get worse for you; you're scared to sleep for fear that you'll die in your dreams (it's happened already) and you try and draw away from everyone during the day, because you're scared that they'll see through your cracking "I'm fine" façade. You've lost weight, and there's a gauntness to your features that wasn't even there when you were on the run and had no food—you're haggard and your inner demons are there for everyone to see. That's why you're trying to hide away.

You manage to get away with it for a while, the hiding, because you call through your door to Ron, "I'm busy! I've got to try and learn all this stuff for school in September!" and, at least at first, you know he buys it; he wouldn't try and drag you from your books, after all. But you're not studying; you're trying to stop yourself screaming out in fear, trying to stop yourself wanting to flee the country and leave all the memories behind, because you don't _want_ to be considered a hero: all you want to do is forget.

When they make the day Voldemort died, 'the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts' though, you know that that's never going to happen.

And soon, even Ron stops believing that you're studying.

"If you don't come out that room right _now_, Hermione, I'll blast the door off!" you hear him say, and you know that he's telling the truth; he loves you, after all, and he doesn't want to see you hurting.

(He just doesn't know that you're in pieces, fragmented, and that you feel as though you'll never be whole again.)

"Do that and I'll never, ever forgive you!" you shout back, because whilst you _want_ him to break down that door and pull you into his arms, and for him to whisper into your ear that everything's going to be alright, you can't let him. You can't let him see you like this: the strong, brilliant Hermione can't be like this.

You can't be depressed.

_~x~_

Soon, he stops trying to get to you, and that hurts, but you know that it's because Harry or Ginny has told him that you need your own space—they've probably told him that you're not sure about a relationship now that you're free from the constraints of being in the same small confinement as him, even though that's not true.

You just don't know if you can take the steps outside of your room to tell him that.

Looking in the mirror, you realise that you're nothing like you used to be: your clothes are too big, hanging off your now-tiny frame; your hair's gone wispy with the lack of nutrition; there's a lack of anything other than fear in your eyes. You're nothing like the Hermione Jean Granger you were this time last year, someone who was willing to stand against Voldemort even when there was a greater chance of death than anything else, and that scares you, because if your will to live has gone, what have you left?

People think that you don't leave the room, but you do; you do every night. You still go down to the memorial—now one erected of glistening marble, one that's every bit as elegant and long-lasting as those whose names are inscribed on it deserve—and you run your hands over each and every name. You've done it so many times that you know which name will follow from the one before, their dates, and yet the monotony of it hasn't helped; it no longer soothes you.

Running from your problems will no longer help.

Sitting down here in the silence, though, sometimes it makes you think that maybe the answer to all this is to leave the world, to join these people in the afterlife—and the lack of anyone to say otherwise is convincing you that this is a good idea. It's not, it definitely isn't—you're not ready to die, and that's what you know on the inside, buried deep beneath the depression—but the lack of protest is warping your perception of what's a good idea and what's not.

Sometimes, you wish that you could go back to how things were before you turned out to be magical, when you attended Muggle school and had a best friend named Amy who you would sit and make daisy chains with in the summer; that life was easy, you think, effortless like breathing, whereas this world is filled with misery and heartache, alongside the inability to express your emotions. You've found love here, a love truer than even the fairytales you heard as a tot, but you don't think of that when you're comparing the worlds.

The blood on your hands, the deaths caused because of _you_, remind you that this world isn't innocent or pain-free, even now that peace rules the land.

Now, you're wondering when you should do it.

_~x~_

You don't really want to die, you know that, but the silence seems to egg you on, and as you sit on the war memorial on the eighteenth of July, you're sure that this is the only way to end the fear that's gripping your heart.

You wish that you could tell someone—Harry, Ginny, _Ron_, the boy (man) you love—but you can't, because how can you tell them that you've been living a lie these past couple of months, and that you're more broken than they could ever be?

How do you tell them that you're nothing more than a liar who needs the support of others, and that they've been wrong all these years: they'd have gotten by fine without you?

And so you lift the wand to your head, tears streaming down your face because this isn't what you_ want_, you want someone to come striding in, your knight in shining armour, when—

"STOP!" you hear someone yell, and it's the voice you've been waiting for: your ginger knight in shining armour, Ronald Weasley, the person who you've wanted to spend the rest of your life with since you were fourteen years old. "Put the wand _down_, Hermione, or…or I'll take it from you by force!" you hear him shout, and you turn your head to see him running towards you, his figure illuminated by the moonlight above.

It's only then you realise that you've never been alone; there's always been the moon there, and with it, the light: light, the thing you were fighting for during all those months, the thing you would have given your life up for.

Then Ron is standing in front of you, yanking the wand out of your hand and throwing it far, far away so that you couldn't get it even if you wanted to—but you don't, because he's here to save you, just like he always has, and you realise that you've been the biggest idiot. You could have told him how you've felt; he couldn't judge, not when he abandoned you for all those months, could he?

"I've been watching you every single night since Harry—_we_-defeated Voldemort," he tells you, and you're surprised; how come you never saw him, even out of the corner of your eye? "I knew that you were down, Hermione, but why didn't you tell me?" he continues, and you can hear his voice breaking.

Somehow, you manage to pull him to you, pushing him down to the steps on which you sit, and you wrap yourself in his embrace, letting the tears spill over his shirt rather than onto yours. "I thought you were happy, and so I didn't want to bother you—I thought that I could fix this, fix myself, but I couldn't, and I'm sorry, oh, I'm so, _so_ sorry!" you wail, and he's patting your back and trying to whisper words of condolence to you, but you can't listen, because he's here, and he's helping you, and that's all you ever wanted.

That's all you ever needed.

You were just too proud to admit it.

"Everything will be alright, Hermione," he promises you, and you find yourself believing him, even if _alright_ seems an abstract idea right now, when you feel so low that you may as well not exist. "You're going to be fine, and then we'll date and be happy and I'll propose and we'll get married and have kids, and I'll even let you pick the names of the kids if you want, if that'll make you happy. That's all I want, Hermione, for you to be happy, for me to be happy, for us _all_ to be happy, because we deserve it, don't we?"

He's right, you know that, it's just hard for you because that's what you've always wanted; you've just been stupid these past weeks and pushed Ron away, when in fact, he was the key to your salvation, the key to you getting back to being the Hermione that you were before all this happened.

He's the one that can make you whole again—just like you make him whole.

You press your lips to his softly, but it's not a romantic kiss, filled with passion; it's one that is reminding you that he's there, that he's real and that he isn't going anywhere, because he's by your side.

"Promise me you'll never try and do that again," he whispers into your hair, and the slightest glimmer of a smile (the first since the last photo session the Daily Prophet put you through) appears on your lips.

"Promise," you whisper back. And you mean it; you'll never act without telling him again.

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